Dan Buckley (left) and Brian Peck stand in the backyard of the sober living home where they live. ZOEY MARAIST | CATHOLIC HERALD

It was a Saturday night, and Billy was eating pizza and watching
the Gators game in the basement bedroom of a sober living home. He called his
mom, Judy, to chat and confirm that they would attend Mass together the next
day. As he hung up the phone, he told his mom he loved her. “I love you,
Billy,” she replied.

A few days later, Judy awoke in the middle of the night to a call
from the police. “William is deceased,” they told her. Judy would learn later
that he died of an overdose — heroin laced with fentanyl. She fell to the
floor, and laid there for a long time.

Billy was 13 years old when he started using marijuana. When his
parents found out, they decided to take him to counseling. But he continued
drinking and using drugs. His parents quickly entered a world they knew very
little about.

“Our home is very Catholic. Addiction and jail were the farthest
things from our life,” she said. “I knew nothing about addiction. I knew
nothing about (drugs) — it was something totally foreign to us.”

Billy’s problem scared his parents, and Judy felt she couldn’t
talk about it. Even when Billy died in March at age 34, not everyone in her
life knew he was an addict.

“It was humiliating, devastating and we lost friends because of
it. It’s a family disease,” said Judy. “How many mothers have a child under
their heart for nine months and think he’s going to be an addict?”

Life on opioids

Dan Buckley was a frequent drug user when he tried prescription
opioid drugs for the first time. The high was unlike anything he had
experienced before. “(It) was the feeling I had been chasing since I started
smoking pot,” he said. “It was a feeling of all problems (going) away. It was a
physically and mentally numbing substance.”

Buckley then took opioid painkillers occasionally and became hooked
after he got into a car accident. The doctors prescribed pain medication to cope
with his broken ribs and cut spleen. Eventually, he turned to a cheaper version
of the drug — heroin.

“If you get to that point in your life when you’re doing heroin,
there’s going to be a moment where you sit by yourself and say, ‘I'm doing
heroin. As a kid, did I really think I was going to end up doing heroin?’ ” asked
Buckley. “I was raised in a great household and I was putting needles in my
arm. Something didn't add up but I couldn’t stop.”

Most people using heroin want to get clean, said Brian Peck, an
Alexandria native. But it’s tremendously difficult. “When you’re using, you
feel like the world is going to end if you can’t get your hit,” he said. “You
become completely apathetic about every other thing in life.”

“(Opioid addicts are) not controlled by their minds, they’re
controlled by a substance,” said Buckley. “I’ve done every drug pretty
addictively and nothing compares to the hold that heroin has.”

Both men were able to detox while serving time in jail for
drug-related charges. “I've gone through some bad stuff in my life and going
through heroin withdrawal tops it,” said Peck. “It’s very painful. There’s like
20 symptoms and all of them are awful.”

But it took more than a detox for them to stop using. They had to
decide that they wanted to stay clean.

“I hated the person I turned into — I became a complete monster,”
said Peck. “Stealing and being homeless was not how I wanted to live my life.
Or addicted, waking up every day needing to get something to feel better.”

Life in recovery

Once he made the choice to change his life, Peck began attending
Bible study. When he was released from jail, he went to rehab. Now, Peck and Buckley
reside in a sober living home in Annandale.

While Peck was using drugs, his mother took out a protective
order against him. Now that he’s sober, he sees her all the time. “We hang out
and every time she sees me she smiles and we laugh and it's literally the best
feeling in the world,” he said.

Peck knows his addiction was deeply trying to his whole family.
“You want to give (an addicted loved one) unconditional love, and you don’t
want to enable them. So it's a very thin line,” he said. “But you don’t want to
give up on people because it’s the loneliest thing in the world.”

“With opioid addiction, as well as any other addiction, the best
thing you can do is love somebody. Just relentless love, caring and offering to
help,” said Buckley. “But when it comes down to it, it’s got to be their
choice. They have to want it. And there's ways that you can show them it's
possible.”

Both men have friends who have died from overdosing. Most of
their former housemates are using drugs again. But they know it’s possible to live
drug-free. “My best advice is — you can do it, nobody's stopping you but you,”
said Peck. “And it's going to suck. You feel like withdrawal is going to last
forever. It’s not. Life gets not only good again but it gets a million times
better.”

Life after a death

Judy prayed for years that her son Billy would stay clean. “I
believed I was going to be one of those people to have my son back to me —
whole,” she said. God didn’t answer that prayer, but Judy believes he gave her
another miracle. Three weeks before he died, Billy went to confession for the
first time in years.

“When my son walked out of there, he was giddy and joyful and
happy. It was like everything was lifted off his soul,” she said. “I think my
son is in heaven with his father and I hope they’re golfing.”

After Billy’s death, Judy thought she would try to forget about
addiction. Instead, she answered a call in her parish bulletin to be a
volunteer for diocesan Catholic Charities Re-Entry Program for newly released
inmates struggling with substance abuse. “Maybe this will be what I can do to
pay honor to my son,” she said.

Opioid conference

The Diocese of Arlington hosted its first conference on the
subject Sept. 29, titled, “Seeking Hope & Healing in the Midst of the
Opioid Crisis.” Watch talks from the conference below.